Education and Self Development. Volume 14, № 3, 2019

Editorial: teachers’ professional development in global contexts

Ilshat Gafurov1, Roza Valeeva2 & Aydar Kalimullin3

All the authors are at Kazan Federal University, Kazan, Russia

1 E-mail: [email protected] ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7744-2067

2 E-mail: [email protected] ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8312-4054

3 E-mail: [email protected] ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7788-7728

DOI: 10.26907/esd14.3.01

This special edition presents a snapshot from around the world of the current state of the research devoted to the issues of professional development of teachers. Teachers’ professional and pedagogical activity is significantly changing today (Teacher education in a time of change, 2016). In many respects, these changes are explained by a new understanding of the purpose and result of education, which is formulated in the documents of educational reform in Russia and in the world, in the context of achieving a new quality of mass education (Valeeva & Gafurov, 2017). The question that becomes extremely important is: “How exactly should the teacher's professional and pedagogical activity change in order to provide a new quality of education meeting the “challenges of the time?”. Over the recent decades, the sociocultural situation in our country has changed significantly. Russia is becoming an open country, building a market economy and a law state, increasing the measure of freedom and responsibility of a person for his/ her own well-being and for the well-being of society. Human capital in the modern world is becoming the main resource for the development of any country, a factor ensuring its stability and progress. Russia, like any other country, needs mobile and highly qualified specialists who are able to make independent, responsible decisions in the face of the uncertainty of a rapidly changing world. This necessarily makes special demands on the education system as a whole and on teacher education (Margolis & Safronova, 2018; Valeeva. & Kalimullin, 2019). These issues are described in the works of the leading Russian and foreign researchers in the field of teacher education who participated in the Fifth International Forum on Teacher Education held on 29-31 May, 2019 in Kazan Federal University (IFTE-2019) (http://ifte.kpfu.ru/en/home-page/). The Institute of Psychology and Education KFU has hosted the International forum on teacher education for the past five year. Traditionally the program of the forum includes pre-conference and post-conference events, three main conferences, keynote lectures, symposia and paper sessions, as well as different roundtables and workshops. In 2015, we had 200 participants and the number of delegates increases each year. The key objectives include the academic exchange of ideas and achievements among Russian and overseas educators in the field of teacher education, as well as building academic and pedagogical partnerships between the participants. The Forum hosts leading Russian and foreign experts on teacher education from the universities of UK, USA, Germany, Ireland, Slovenia, China, Israel etc. In 2018, the International

6 Creative Commons by the Authors is licenced under CC-BY Образование и саморазвитие. Том 14, № 3, 2019 forum on teacher education was organized in cooperation with the International Study Association on Teachers and Teaching (ISATT), which held its Regional Conference at the same time. Last year the forum attracted more than 550 Russian and more than 60 overseas participants, including eight ISATT National Representatives. IFTE-2019 hosted in cooperation with Russian Educational Research Association (RERA), the Educational Studies Association of Ireland, the International Janusz Korczak Association, with support from the World Education Research Association (WERA), the International Association of Educators (INASED) and the Association for Teacher Education in Europe (ATEE). Over 600 delegates from 132 Russian and 74 overseas universities and research centres participated in the Forum (including scientists and practitioners from Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Cuba, Germany, India, Italy, Kazakhstan, Namibia, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Slovenia, Sweden, Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, the UK, and the USA). It`s worth mentioning that currently the International Forum on Teacher Education is one of the biggest platforms for discussing various educational trends and reforms in the field of teacher education. Over the years Forum has grown to be one of the most influential conferences in the field of education in Eastern Europe and post-Soviet countries. During IFTE-2019 three International sub- conferences were held: “Continuing teacher education: new concepts and technologies”, “Early-career teachers: induction and professional development” and "Research-based teacher education", with 580 papers on different educational themes. Researchers shared their views and research results on the issues of modernization and development of the content of teacher education. They discussed questions related to values and priorities within the field of modern teacher education, to modernization processes and contents of teacher education including the requirements of a competency-based approach. Key issues of teachers’ professional development within this and other essential topics related to teacher education were also touched upon at the symposiums and round tables. It is not by chance that the International Forum on Teacher Education is held at Kazan Federal University as it is one of the most renowned and largest Russian research centres in the field of education and psychology. The University offers 42 bachelor’s and 37 master’s pedagogical programmes. Over 10,000 students with a teacher education major currently study at KFU. Annually, over 10,000 in-service teachers complete professional development courses run by the University. KFU is one of the few universities implementing programmes in all three tiers of higher education and in all subject majors needed for modern schools. The University boasts an internationally recognised teacher education infrastructure and a unique teacher education model that combines the advantages of traditional (non-pedagogical) and pedagogical universities. Of all the Russian universities that offer teacher education programs, KFU is the only one ranked among the best universities in the world in the subject area “Education” according to the QS and THE rankings. According to the Times Higher Education rankings, KFU heads the list of the best universities located in the Eastern Europe and post-Soviet countries in the area of “Education”. This is one of the KFU’s key priorities in integrating Russian education research into the international scientific community. The authors of the papers in this special issue represent a variety of positions and address a number of the questions raised in the high quality debate. The evidence they present emanates from nine different nations (Austria, India, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Switzerland and United Kingdom). Appearing first in this issue’s line-up is Teachers’ professional competence and their evaluation, authored by Zdenka Gadušová, Alena Hašková and Ľubica Predanocyová from Constantine the Philosopher University, Nitra, Slovakia. Their research study revolves around the possibility of increasing the quality of the teacher's performance by

Тип лицензирования авторов – лицензия творческого сообщества CC-BY 7 Education and Self Development. Volume 14, № 3, 2019 mapping them to the requirements of the teacher's professional competency profile. They present the results of the research project Evaluation of Teacher Competences, focusing on the development and design of a comprehensive evaluation model and tools for evaluating different teaching competences. The second paper Teachers’ Well-Being: Overlooked Aspect of Teacher Development, by Manpreet Kaur and Balwant Singh from India (Partap College of Education). They regard teachers as the most crucial factor in the education system responsible for students’ achievement, satisfaction and well-being. Teacher well-being is highly important for the success of education. In this article the authors discuss the results of the exploratory study of teachers’ well-being. 50 secondary school teachers answered what well- being is; what are the various factors affecting teachers’ well-being and how to enhance teachers’ well- being through professional learning activities. The authors conclude that initiating a continuous focus on teachers’ well-being might be the best way to provide fertile ground for teacher’s personal and professional development. Challenges of Initial Teacher Education in the Context of Higher Education Reform in Serbia is written by Branka Radulović, Olivera Gajić, Svetlana Španović and Biljana Lungulov from University of Novi Sad. The study centers on the effects and the challenges of initial teacher education in Serbia after accepting the provisions of the Bologna Declaration in 2003. Overall, this article highlights the difficulties faced by initial teacher education programs: the competitiveness of the teacher profession with other careers that are better paid; difficulties in monitoring and including rapid changes in information and communication technologies and their impact on young people. Authored by Elisabeth Windl & Johannes Dammerer from University of Education Lower Austria, the fourth paper, Teacher Training in Austria with Special Consideration of Mentoring in the Induction Phase, begins with the assertion that the teacher training programmes in Austria have been reformed fundamentally in recent years. The researchers explain that teacher training is no longer based on school types but on age cohorts, teachers at primary level and teachers at secondary level. They provide an overview of teacher training as a continuum of professionalization consisting of three phases. The authors consider mentoring in the induction phase as support for career entry offering many opportunities, requiring careful implementation. The fifth article is Creativity and Need for Cognition in Students of Pedagogy. In this paper, co-authors, Janina Uszyńska-Jarmoc, Monika Żak-Skalimowska and Beata Kunat from the University of Bialystok (Poland) focus on exploring the relationship between the level of creative thinking in pedagogy students and their internal need to learn about the world and themselves. Their findings show that there is a positive, statistically significant relationship between the need for cognition and creativity in pedagogy students in their first cycle of study. Manuela Keller-Schneider and Uwe Hericks from Zurich University of Teacher Education (Switzerland) in the sixth article, Beginning Teachers’ Appraisal of Professional Requirements and Implications for Teacher Induction in Switzerland, present a study of beginning teachers’ appraisals of professional requirements. The authors discuss the results of their investigation which show how beginning teachers appraise the relevance of professional requirements, how competent they feel dealing with them and how challenged they experience themselves. The independent researcher SameenaA ziz from the United Kingdom is the author of the seventh article in this issue, Are Madrassa and Mainstream School Teachers Mutually Exclusive? British Muslims Discuss the Influence of Teachers on Their Emerging Identities. This evidence-based small-scale study acknowledges that over the past ten years there has been a change in the attitudes of British Muslims towards their madrassa and school

8 Creative Commons by the Authors is licenced under CC-BY Образование и саморазвитие. Том 14, № 3, 2019 teachers. According to the study participants, madrassas have progressed greatly in forging stronger teacher-pupil relationships, aligning the pedagogy with mainstream schools and updating the curriculum to contextualise Islam to the lived realities of the youth. The eighth article is A Review of Social Robots in Classrooms: Emerging Educational Technology and Teacher Education, which is co-authored by Violeta Rosanda and Andreja Istenič Starčič from University of Primorska in Slovenia. In this article, the authors point out that the 21st century is the age of robots, an age in which we are witnessing the development of social robots for education. They acknowledge that initial teacher education needs to follow the development of robots and prepare students and teachers in applying robotic technology in teaching. In the review, they identified how robotic technology is applied in classrooms on different educational levels and subjects. The final five articles explore the issues of teacher education in Russia from different perspectives. In the ninth article, Valerian Gabdulсhakov, Stella Grigoryeva, Catherine Krivonozhkina and Guyzel Zakirova discuss strategic technologies for pedagogic education in universities. The authors identify three main findings from their study: on the basis of the obtained matrix the set of technologies of pedagogical education; psychological and pedagogical conditions of realization of technologies at the level of baccalaureate, pedagogical master's degree program, and professional retraining of workers of education are defined; and the organizational and pedagogical model of realization of technologies in the conditions of classical University is developed. Gasangusein Ibragimov in the tenth article discus his study which analysed the methodology of research-oriented training in teacher education. His findings showed that research-oriented learning in the modern system of teacher education is formed as an independent didactic system, which has grown on the basis of the theory of problem learning and aimed at the formation of research competence of students. The researcher found out the influence of group, pair and individual forms of research-oriented training organization on the effectiveness of the formation of research competence of students. The eleventh article Teacher Competence Deficiencies in the Use of Mediation Technology in Education is co-authored by Olga Smolyaninova and Julia Popova. Theoretical analysis and expert surveys allowed the authors to identify teacher training deficiencies in the context of the mediation technology implementation for conflict prevention and resolution at all levels of education. The article presents an analysis of the key professional competencies, obtained from the expert survey of practicing mediators of Krasnoyarsk, in a comparative retrospective with similar international studies. The study presented by Nadezhda Sayfullina and Rosa Valeeva has predictive competence of future educators as its focus. The article is aimed at determining the degree of scientific research of the phenomenon of predictive competence and the identification of modern approaches to its study and formation. The authors used as a leading a bibliometric analysis of the information space of modern pedagogical research on the most popular databases: "Scopus", "Web of Science", and "E-library". The final article discusses the development of local educational standards as a strategy for the modernization of teacher education and is co-authored by Аleksander Bermous & Vladimir Kirik from South Federal University. They explored the potential cumulative effect of this activity including modernization and optimization of the educational program management system, stimulation of philosophical and scientific reflection of the training processes for the educational system, development of the regional scientific and pedagogical community.

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We would like to thank everybody who helped to edit the publications, who wrote reviews on the articles. We send warm thanks to the members of scientific committee (PhDs and researches from Russia and other countries) who carefully checked the quality and authenticity of the manuscripts. We send special thanks to the editorial committee members who prepared this issue. We are grateful to our partners – the Russian Educational Research Association (RERA), the Educational Studies Association of Ireland (ESAI), the International Janusz Korczak Association (IKA) with support from the World Education Research Association (WERA), the Association for Teacher Education in Europe (ATEE) and the International Association of Educators (INASED) - for their support and share of international experience as a source of innovation in improving the Russian system of teacher education.

References Margolis A.A., Safronova M.A. (2018). The Project of Modernisation of Teacher Education in the Russian Federation: Outcomes 2014—2017. Psikhologicheskaya nauka i obrazovanie -Psycho- logical Science and Education, 23(1), 5-24. doi:10.17759/pse.2018230101. (In Russ., аbstr. in Engl.). Teacher Education in a Time of Change (2016). Bristol: Policy Press (TheT eacher Education Group). Valeeva R. & Gafurov I. (2017). Initial teacher education in Russia: connecting practice, theory and research. European Journal of Teacher Education, 40(3), 342-360. doi:10.1080/02619768.2017.13 26480 Valeeva, R.A. & Kalimullin, A.A. (2019). Learning To Teach In Russia: A Review of Policy and Em- pirical Research. In Tatto, M.T. and Menter, I. (Eds.) Knowledge, Policy and Practice in Teacher Education: a Cross-National Study. London: Bloomsbury.

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